Tracking Health and Wellness Applications of Brain Science

Dr. Pascale Michelon

Learn about cognition and mental self-rotation with these quick brain teasers

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map-reading

Men­tal self-rota­tion is the cog­ni­tive skill to imag­ine your­self in space and to imag­ine your­self mov­ing — such as when you read­ing a map or find­ing your car in the park­ing lot. [Read more…] about Learn about cog­ni­tion and men­tal self-rota­tion with these quick brain teasers

Test your Mind with these nine Classic Visual Illusions

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Are the two orange cir­cles of the same size? 

One way to learn more about our brains and minds is to look at how we can trick them–that is, to see how we react to brain teasers and visu­al illusions.

The brain has two hemi­spheres, each divid­ed into four lobes. Each lobe is (large­ly) respon­si­ble for dif­fer­ent func­tions. For instance the frontal cor­tex (in yel­low) is respon­si­ble for deci­sion mak­ing and plan­ning; the tem­po­ral lobe (in pur­ple) for lan­guage and mem­o­ry; the pari­etal lobe (in green) for spa­tial skills, and the occip­i­tal lobe (in red) is entire­ly devot­ed to vision: It is thus the place where visu­al illu­sions hap­pen..

Below are 9 opti­cal illu­sions that com­bine fun and learn­ing about our visu­al sys­tem. We know you know there is a trick since these are illu­sions… but don’t try to be smarter than your brain. Enjoy being surprised!

(You’ll find answers and expla­na­tions at the end of the article)

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[Read more…] about Test your Mind with these nine Clas­sic Visu­al Illusions

3 fun brain teasers for adults to challenge your cognitive skills

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Brain_cognitiveskillsFirst of all, what is cog­ni­tion? Cog­ni­tion has to do with how we under­stand the world and act in it. Cog­ni­tive skills are the brain-based func­tions that we need to car­ry out any task from the sim­plest to the most com­plex. For exam­ple, answer­ing the tele­phone involves per­cep­tion (hear­ing the ring tone), deci­sion tak­ing (answer­ing or not), motor skill (lift­ing the receiv­er), lan­guage skills (talk­ing and under­stand­ing lan­guage), social skills (inter­pret­ing tone of voice and inter­act­ing prop­er­ly with anoth­er human being).

Here are three fun brain teasers to help you chal­lenge your cog­ni­tive skills over the week­end, com­ing from our col­lec­tion of brain teasers & games for adults of all ages. Enjoy!

Mental rotation exercise to challenge your brain’s parietal lobe over the holidays

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Men­tal rota­tion refers to mov­ing things around in your mind. It is one of the main visu­ospa­tial skills we all have…in dif­fer­ent degrees, yes.

Here’s an exam­ple. Please pic­ture in your mind an arrow point­ing to the right. Now, turn this arrow so it points to the left. Done? You have just per­formed a men­tal rota­tion. [Read more…] about Men­tal rota­tion exer­cise to chal­lenge your brain’s pari­etal lobe over the holidays

Test your memory and reasoning skills with these American and international proverbs

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Temporal lobe Frontal LobeMem­o­ry relies most­ly on tem­po­ral (see green area, in image to the left) and frontal (in red) areas of the brain. These may be the areas that will get stim­u­lat­ed when you (assum­ing you are Amer­i­can or have lived in the US for long) try to remem­ber the miss­ing words in the Amer­i­can proverbs below.

How­ev­er when it comes to inter­na­tion­als proverbs below you may have to use your rea­son­ing skills more than your mem­o­ry skills, as it is like­ly that you do not know these proverbs. In this case, the frontal exer­cise is more intense. Try to guess what the final words of each inter­na­tion­al proverb might be. Use your log­i­cal skills. [Read more…] about Test your mem­o­ry and rea­son­ing skills with these Amer­i­can and inter­na­tion­al proverbs

Quick, interactive brain teaser to test your concentration and cognitive flexibility

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Here is a fun and inter­ac­tive ver­sion of the famous Stroop test, often used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure response inhi­bi­tion and cog­ni­tive flex­i­bil­ity. Per­form­ing well on the test requires strong con­cen­tra­tion and self-reg­u­la­tion. [Read more…] about Quick, inter­ac­tive brain teas­er to test your con­cen­tra­tion and cog­ni­tive flexibility